How to begin the story of the earthly life of the Savior? Matthew began with a Hebrew genealogy, Luke began with the miraculous pregnancy of Mary's cousin, and John began with a discourse on the Word that is the light of the world. Matthew and Luke first introduced the infant Jesus, while John introduced the adult Jesus at the event of His baptism by John the Baptist.

Mark, the shortest gospel, provided only the sparsest of introductions with the prophesies in Isaiah and Malachi that refer to John the Baptist, then moved quickly through the story of the baptism of Jesus. In an elegant economy of words, Mark set the themes of his account not through introductions, history, or philosophy, but in the way he weaved the stories of Jesus' life.

In the last half of the first chapter, Mark hammered home one of these principle themes of his gospel account: the authority of Jesus over all of creation. The first to respond to Jesus' authority were Peter and Andrew, who the passage states immediately left their livelihoods and their fishing gear at the command of this new rabbi. Just a few lines later, James and John do the same and more, as they also left their father, their family's authority, at the command of Jesus.

Did these four know Jesus before this event? We don't know that answer, but no matter how we speculate about this question, the response was remarkable. My guess is that these fishermen on the Sea of Galilee did not know the carpenter from Nazareth, who lived several miles over the hills to the east, so their response came from their instantaneous recognition of God's authority in this stranger.

However, first century Israel was a small place with relatively few people, and it is plausible that Jesus had often met and talked with at least some of these four. Jesus and his father Joseph may have done repair work on the house where Zebedee and his boys lived, and Jesus might have have attended synagogue school with a few of these future disciples when they were younger. If this is the case, their response is still miraculous. Peter, Andrew, James, and John recognized the integrity of their friend from Nazareth and the commission He had received from God to change the world, and they were willing to drop everything to follow "one of them" when He called them to a movement that seemed to lack even the basic foundations that had proved to be inadequate for the scores of leaders in the centuries before who declared their intent to rescue God's people.

Mark did not stop with this demonstration of authority that provoked a response from the first disciples. His next account showed Jesus in the local synagogue, speaking words of truth that commanded attention and astonished the religious leaders. Frequently over Jesus' ministry, the religious leaders, who claimed their authority from their years of study, would question how a carpenter from Nazareth could speak with such authority, and the obvious answer is that the authority came from His Father.

Mark escalates the demonstration of authority with another story so that his readers could not question whether the responses of the four disciples or the Capernaum rabbis was merely a reaction to the personality of Jesus. Mark records the earliest testimony of the complete identify of Jesus, coming from the evil spirits inhabiting a man at the synagogue. These spirits named Mary and Joseph's boy as the Son of God and were terrified of His presence. With one command, Jesus expelled the spirits and healed this man, whose presence at the synagogue implies that he had frequently tried and failed to be cured of his possession.

Jesus' teachings and ministry did not rely on his authority. In the same way, Revelation 3:20 provides the image of Jesus knocking on the door to our hearts and waiting for us to answer. Our salvation depends on us accepting the gift of Grace, so we are in danger of overlooking the authority of Jesus. We may be like the disciples in Luke 8:25 who were astonished that their friend, Jesus, stilled the winds and the waves by His command.

The authority Mark revealed so early in his gospel is fundamental to the person of our Savior. Jesus still commands authority that our most revered and most studied pastors and scholars could never attain. Jesus still commands authority over all the powers of this world and the next, and over the winds, seas, and all of creation. Jesus deserves complete authority over us, but He refuses to demand that of us. He will even allow us to turn over fragments of authority to Him, even when we think we are doing good by allowing some part of our lives to be under His control. We even grab some of that control out of His hands, and still He patiently waits—and knocks.

This is not right! Our Creator, our Savior, and our King should not have to beg us to submit to His ultimate and Holy authority—but that is what Love does. Love does not demand, and we with feeble faith wrestle against our sinful nature to relinquish more of ourselves to God and to resist taking back what we have already given. "What a wretched man I am!", Paul wrote in Romans 7:24, and all believers repeats this chorus of frustration throughout our earthly lives.

Jesus knows, and Jesus loves. Jesus still molds us as much as we are willing to be reformed, guiding us patiently until in heaven we will find our complete and pure selves in the authority and perfection of God. Until that time, we should keep "pressing on" to that perfect goal, and God will bless our efforts.